Content analysis
The analysis of the contents of
documents (as opposed to the analysis of their form). Content analysis is
used in many sciences, for example, educational research, linguistics,
psychology and sociology. In information science has different approaches been
used, including automated content analysis based on word frequencies.
Krippendorff (1994, p. 407) mentions a dilemma for content analysis: "If
categories are obtained from the very material being analyzed, findings are not
generalizable much beyond the given data. If they are derived from a general
theory, findings tend to ignore much of the symbolic richness and uniqueness of
the data in hand. The compromises content analysis must seek are rarely easy
ones".
Literature:
Krippendorff, K. (1989). Content Analysis (Vol. 1, pp. 403-407 IN: International Encyclopedia of Communications Vol. 1-4. Ed. by Erik Barnouw et al. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Molina, M. P. (1994). Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Concept and Practice of
Written Text Documentary Content Analysis. Journal of Documentation,
50(2), 111-133.
Tibbo, H. R. (1992).Abstracting Across the Disciplines: A Content Analysis of
Abstracts From the Natural Sciences, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities
With Implications for Abstracting Standards and Online Information Retrieval.
LISR, 14, 31-56.
White, M. D. & Marsh, E. E. (2006). Content analysis: A flexible methodology. Library Trends, 55(1), 22-45.
See also Subject analysis
See also: Information science methods
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 17-10-2006